A Dutch Jew cut the stone at the heart of King Charles' coronation

Cutting the Cullinan diamond was a tremendous undertaking, not least because Edward VII was initially keen on keeping it in its rough state.

However, Joseph, who founded what became the Royal Asscher Diamond Company, persuaded him it could be fashioned into astonishing jewels for the crown and the Imperial Sceptre, which will also play a key role in the ceremony at Westminster Abbey this week.

Louis Asscher at his table

Louis Asscher

“Joseph was so afraid of doing something wrong when he came to cut the stone,” Yael said. “It took him two years of studying the Cullinan before deciding how to cut it. In order to do so, he developed not just new cutting tools but also a new cut, known today as the Asscher Cut, as a way of showing off a diamond to its greatest effect with numerous facets.”

At the time, the Cullinan stone attracted enormous international attention, with decoy armed soldiers employed to guard it when it was actually sent by parcel post to London.
Its route to the Asscher diamond headquarters in Amsterdam also required subterfuge.

The press were told it would travel in a sealed box from London to the Netherlands on a Royal Navy ship.

But there was nothing in the box. In fact, it was transported by Joseph’s brother Abraham who sailed from London to Amsterdam wearing a particularly heavy coat with the precious diamond secreted in his pocket.

In February 1908, Joseph began cutting the stone in front of an invited audience of the international press. But things did not go to plan.

As he hit his knife over a two-centimetre incision he had already made in the stone the tool broke and he was sent reeling backwards from the force of the failed blow.

4 children of Louis Asscher in 1936 in Schewenigen

Louis Asschler's children

Family legend suggests that he either fainted or had suffered a heart attack as a result of the massive tension he was facing. Four days later, witnessed by just one public notary, Asscher successfully cut the diamond.

It became nine separate jewels, including the Great Star of Africa, which sits on the Sovereign’s Sceptre, and the slightly smaller Second Star, which is positioned at the front of the Imperial State Crown.

Several of the smaller stones were reset in brooches worn by the late Queen Elizabeth II, while 96 “chips”, residue from the cutting, were given to the Asscher family and have been set in rings for their marriages — most recently last year at an descendant’s wedding in Tel Aviv.